FOR Brian Myers, the Five By Five came at the beginning of a remarkable 40-year career in showbusiness - albeit one that has been as much in the backwaters as in the limelight.

Brian grew up on Bank Top, Darlington, served his time as a joiner in William Brown's sawmills in John Street, and by night was a Beat guitar hero. He was one of the original members of Jet Storme and the Crusaders (who were to be called King Kelly and the Crusaders until someone thought better) and then moved into the Crestas, who played at The GR Club in Shildon, run by one George Reynolds.

When the Crestas crumbled, he picked up his guitar and joined Derek Saint and The Sinners.

And what a guitar it was.

"I was one of the first in the region to have a Fender Stratocaster," he says. "I bought it for £167 from Hamilton's music store, in Middlesbrough, and people said: 'How much for a guitar?' But when I took it out of the case..."

He still has it today, its ice blue faded and its backplate chipped from its journeys around the world. "I wanted a red one but he said that there was a two-month waiting list," he says. It's now worth thousands on the open market, but is without price to Brian.

The Saint and the Sinners were Derek Thompson on vocals, Harry Galloway on drums, David Sefton on bass, Peter Swan on rhythm guitar and Brian on lead. They had regular gigs at Northallerton Town Hall, Witham Hall in Barnard Castle, the Harwood Club at Catterick, Tow Law Village Hall and the Gaiety, at Ferryhill.

"The Five By Five was absolutely brilliant," he says. "The crowd were absolutely wild."

The Sinners' biggest gig, though, was as warm-up - with the Concordes - before the Darlington versus Arsenal third round FA Cup tie at Feethams, when 19,717 saw the Quakers go down 2-0 on January 9, 1965. "It was so cold, you couldn't feel your fingertips on the strings," he says.

The Sinners broke up in 1968. "Things were changing," says Brian, who lives near Middleton St George. "There weren't the venues and the dancehalls were turning into bingo halls, and the big bands stopped coming."

He went on to the working men's club circuit, starting off in a duo Mee and Thee with Stan Ward, who now lives in Etherley. In 1969, they were voted the best act in North-East clubland.

In the early 1970s, he ventured out on his own, calling himself Bryan St John - his surname coming from the name of his Bank Top primary school. He mixed music with stand-up comedy and, with his wife, Shirley, did seasonal cabaret stints in Sicily, Spain and Malta.

In the 1980s and 1990s, his day job was landlord at the Lord Nelson in Gainford, but he had a remarkable sideline as a TV extra. For instance, he was in six episodes of Blake's Seven as a Scaren. "I was killed off by 'the light that brings pain' on Bamburgh beach," he says with a smile. "We were wearing these little skirts and it was about five below."

He acted as the walk-through man for Sting, Sean Bean and Tommy Lee Jones in Stormy Monday in the late-1980s and he's been an extra in, among others, Supergran, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Harry, Our Friends in the North, Heartbeat and Dalzeil and Pascoe. He even helped Noel Edmonds set up a Gotcha ("I'd never heard of the chap," he says) and got roped into Da Ali G Show.

Now 65, he doesn't do much TV but still does charity shows with his Fender Strat. "I will be playing that as long as I can walk," he says.

Published: ??/??/2004

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.